Experts anticipate that the sinkhole will continue to expand at a brisk rate in the coming months. By the spring of 2019, the chasm will likely span hundreds of thousands of acres, with a projected width, length, and depth slightly greater than that of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Once it reaches this size, geologists expect the crater to stabilize and stop growing.

Scientists have been studying Hunga Tonga for years, to learn more about how exceedingly rare volcanic islands like this take shape.

Incredibly, Hunga Tonga is only the third known volcanic pop-up like this to have arisen in the last 150 years, so it's an incredible scientific opportunity to investigate its esoteric environment – and especially to see how that landscape might resemble other strange and rocky terrain

Nature photographers will often come across some rather eyebrow-raising things out in the wild. Nothing is a better example of this than what Finnish photographer Lassi Rautiainen managed to capture – a wild bear and wolf keeping a close friendship out in the wilderness. “It’s very unusual to see a bear and a wolf getting on as this” Lassi explains, yet the female grey wolf and male brown bear seem to be getting on fine as evidenced by the photographs of them with one another.

Scientists in the Galápagos have observed something amazing: the evolution of a completely new species, in the wild, in real-time. And it took just two generations.

Back in 2017, genomic sequencing and the analysis of physical characteristics officially confirmed the new species of Darwin's finch, endemic to a small island called Daphne Major in the Galápagos. Its discoverers nicknamed it Big Bird.

A new species of stiletto snake which can stab sideways and jump a distance equal to its own body length has been discovered in West Africa.

Three specimens were found by a team of scientists working in the rainforests of southeastern Guinea and northwestern Liberia, and were later all identified as a species previously unknown to science.

The snake is from a family of vipers which have teeth protruding from the sides of their mouths, allowing them to strike prey with their venomous fangs from an unusual angle and without even opening their mouths.

The group is also known as mole vipers or burrowing asps and, due to their unusual physiology, they cannot be handled as other snakes can by holding them behind the head.

China is still an unknown travel gem for the most part, I really believe that. Especially for those that cannot speak Chinese. For example my latest trip to China was to Shaoguan and Danxiashan both in the north of the Guangdong province, neither of which are even recognised as locations on most travel websites. I was the only foreigner in sight, and certainly the only one to do the hike to Penis Rock. Sorry what? Yes – PENIS ROCK! These unknown gems of China